Music

By making really short songs.

They aren't. The fees are supposed to benefit the streaming companies.

I hope the bill discussed in the article helps rectify that.

Less avocado toast.

To put that in perspective... If you listened to 30+ songs a day, a thousand a month. And you only listened to ONE artist. That artist's label company would get $1.73 for the month, and of that, the artist would probably pick up like 50c.

I feel like people are starting themselves blind on per-stream revenue in a bad way - no one is actually paying per stream. Not the customers, not the streaming companies, not the labels. This is the deal when it comes to streaming platforms - you get to listen to as much as you want for a fixed amount of money per month.

It's a little bit like saying someone who bought a CD in the 90s for $10 and listened to every song 100 times is a 10 times worse customer than someone who bought the same CD and listened to every song just 10 times. Yes, the person who listened to the CD 100 times paid 10 times less on a per-song listen basis, but that's quite simply not relevant.

Meanwhile... Last year, Taylor Swift received over $100 million for streaming from Spotify alone, making her a billionaire.

Clearly, (some) musicians are doing better than ever. And, judging by this dishonest, manipulative screed, they are determined to do better still.

Record companies have been stealing artist record sales for 70 years. This is nothing new to musical artists. The motivation to get on a streaming service is so sell tickets to your tour shows. Inflated album prices of the 90s made very few artists any money.

Streaming was never going to be profitable, it was the only option the music industry had to make any kind of money over piracy.

Most artists are happy to be making nothing on streaming, because giving access to your recorded music sells tickets. Tour tickets sales and merch has been the bread and butter for the musical artist for decades and remains the primary source of income.

This is why more people need to move away from Spotify. They pay artists way too little.

We need a users controlled streaming platform. First we have to get rid of those disgusting capitist rats, then we can work on a revenu model. People are willing to pay a small amount to access content, that' proven now, we just need to give the control to the users.

I'm more concerned that streaming platform algorithms prioritise passive listening (maybe not more concerned... I'm not sure how concern is quantified). It goes against their business model to risk serving users music that might actually push, and thus potentially expand, their taste. Music that is challenging may cause a user to stop listening. Better for the auto play algorithm to serve up safe bets, homogenising the general popular music gene pool. Like serving endless Big Macs in case tom yum is too spicy or lamb shoulder is too rich. As a result, the way to find success in the era of streaming platforms is to play G-D-Em-C and sing about the boy/girl you like/liked. This causes a feedback loop where bland music leads to bland tastes, which leads to bland music...

Having a musical idea, and recording it, expressing it the way that you thought it... That required a lot of effort, from a lot of engineers, at a studio, with a lot of expensive equipment... As recently as the mid 90s.

Now we've got Jacob Collier, winning Grammys from his bedroom.

To assume you can live off streams today would be like a journalist thinking they could survive off of tweets 3 years ago. Getting well edited thoughts out to the masses via the press required a lot of effort from a lot of engineers, at a studio using lots of expensive equipment.

Commercial radio stations pay about 12 cents per play, while college stations pay about 6 cents per play. Half of the money goes to the publisher and half goes to the songwriter or songwriters.

It's always been a crap shoot for musicians. They make more money touring which is why even really successful musicians tour well into their twilight years.

Record sales are also a crapshoot. Someone else posted the numbers for those in this thread. Streaming allows more access by more people to more music. But that access results in a cost. The cost is less pay per listen. The entire industry is broken.

https://kbin.social/m/[email protected]/t/926850/-/comment/5918633

700,000 streams per month across their entire discography gets you to the poverty wage for an individual.

Plus it is entirely passive income once the songs are out so they could tour live in addition, or go get a non-music job if it's not enough.

Easy.

The average middle class income in Canada is $70,000. All I have to do is get 40.5 million streams per year to afford a small home 2 hours away from the city where I play music.

Honestly, you can be a full-time musician or you can have a comfortable life. You can't have both.